The crow was at the window. Valanice knew it was there
without even turning around. She knew that it was only a matter of time before
it showed its face again. She and Rosella had returned from the realm of
Etheria, and were just calming down from their shared experience. Rosella's
finding a man that she tentatively confessed that she was in love with was
something that brought joy as well as relief to Valanice, so she knew that the
crow was due to visit soon…and now, here it was.

Its appearances weren't frequent, but they were still often
enough to make her slightly agitated. At one time, she wasn't sure how long she
had been noticing the bird, yet now she was positive that she had been seeing
it ever since her wedding day. When she and Graham, her new husband, had exited
the monastery, she had looked over her shoulder and had seen a crow perched
atop the wooden cross that was mounted on the building's highest arch.

She knew what the creature was the moment she saw it, thanks
to many years of thorough schooling in all natural sciences, but she was
startled to see it just the same. Seeing a bird typically associated with evil
and misfortune perched atop a symbol associated with good was unsettling
enough, but until that day, Valanice had never seen a single crow in Kolyma.

---

At the time, she feared that the crow was an omen of her
parents' deaths, and indeed, she had feared them dead for many years, though
their absence was still a mystery to her. Even Philomel, the old sorcerer that
had transported her and Graham to Graham's homeland, had no idea what had
happened to them.

However, one day they came to visit Valanice. Her daughter
Rosella was ten years old at the time. So was Alexander, the son that had been
taken from her so long ago, the son that she refused to see as anything but
alive and well.

One of the servants had rushed up to Graham, shouting
something about a "giant white bird with four legs" approaching the castle.
When several other servants began reporting the same thing, Graham and Valanice
decided to see this "bird" for themselves. Though it had two colossal feathered
wings and was flying through the air, it was not a bird, and as fantastic and
bizarre as it was, both the king and the queen felt a shiver of recognition as
they gazed at it.

It was a huge, white, winged stallion, with a leather bridle
covering its face, bearing a single rider upon its unsaddled back. It landed
just short of the moat, and the rider announced the imminent arrival of the
king and queen of Kolyma: Cedric and Coignice, Valanice's parents.

Everyone was stunned at this sudden news, Valanice most of
all. Within the hour, a procession of horse-drawn carriages appeared on the
main road that led to Castle Daventry, and a short time after that, Valanice
was embracing the two people that she felt she would never see again for more
than a decade. Coignice's auburn hair was now a steely gray, and there were
many more wrinkles in her round, gentle face, and though the coarse, bristly
locks that framed Cedric's angular face were almost completely white, there was
still a hint of the bright yellow that it had been in his youth – a color that
had reappeared in his granddaughter's golden tresses.

Rosella stared dubiously at the aged couple that Valanice
warmly introduced to her. After much persuasion from her mother, the young
princess finally stepped out from behind Valanice's dress to greet her
relatives. Rosella peered with silent curiosity at her grandfather's face for
several seconds, then remarked:

"You have hair like a boar."

Ashamed of her daughter's manners, Valanice scolded Rosella
harshly for several minutes. When she turned to apologize for the princess's
behavior, Cedric merely chuckled, then said:

"She is like her mother."

Rosella seemed to warm up to Cedric and Coignice after their
awkward first meeting. She was completely awestruck when she learned that
Pegasus, the winged horse that had appeared earlier that day, was theirs. She
began pleading with Cedric for permission to ride the creature. Before Cedric
could respond to her request, Valanice firmly said that no daughter of hers was
going to go for a ride on a flying horse. After a heated dispute between the
three generations, Coignice suggested a compromise, which was to let Rosella
feed and pet Pegasus, something which Valanice had to admit she could see no
harm in.

Later that afternoon, Rosella fed Pegasus carrots and
stroked his wings beneath the shade of a wide oak in the castle gardens while
Valanice and her parents kept a close watch on her from a nearby bench.

They had much to say, and they didn't hesitate in relating
everything they could to each other; Valanice telling her parents all that had
happened since she had become queen of Daventry, while Cedric and Coignice told
their daughter what had happened in Kolyma since the day the hideous witch
Hagatha (who had finally been defeated several years prior, Cedric said) had
imprisoned her in the crystal tower. Both sides were astonished and saddened at
times, but when their conversation had reached a lull, Valanice had an entirely
new image of what her parents were like, and vice versa.

There was an awkward silence for some time, broken only by
the sound of Pegasus softly pawing the earth and the wind in the leaves of the
oak. Valanice was the first to finally speak again:

"Mother, Father," she said, trying to hold back her tears,
"I can't tell you how sorry I am for leaving you behind and leaving my homeland
heirless…but I truly thought you had perished."

"Don't worry, Valanice," said Cedric kindly. "You knew where
your heart belonged, and love fettered by royal traditions can never be true.
Despite being born a commoner and trained as a knight, your husband has
certainly done a fine job of reigning over this kingdom. There are many wise
and noble knights in my court, and I am hopeful that one of them will be a
ruler just as good as Graham. I have begun the process of singling one out for
the honor, and I hope to make my decision as to who will rule in my place upon
my return to Kolyma."

Valanice nodded. It was a bittersweet reunion: though she
was overcome with joy at seeing her parents alive after years of fearing them
dead by Hagatha's hands, she knew that this meeting was destined to be their
last. Valanice had started a family of her own in a land that she had quickly
grown to love, and the man that she had married was everything that she had
been hoping for. Kolyma needed Cedric and Coignice, and Daventry needed Graham
and Valanice. In all probability, their paths would never cross again, so
Valanice knew she would have to spend as much time with her mother and father
as possible before they said their final farewell.

Kolyma seemed more and more like a finished chapter in
Valanice's life. Though she had many joyful memories of that land, like those
of her parents, friends and the beautiful trees, flowers and mountains, she had
many painful ones as well. Her homeland being terrorized by that green-skinned
witch, being taken from it, thinking that her parents were killed…and that
poor, ragged, thin, dark-haired girl that always tagged along with her…

Valanice was jarred from her thoughts by a movement from
beneath the oak tree. She leapt to her feet.

"Rosella, don't even think about mounting that animal!" she
cried. Rosella, who had been standing at Pegasus's side with one hand on his
back, looked over her shoulder at her mother.

"I wasn't mounting him!" she protested.

"Don't lie to me, Rosella!" Valanice snapped.

"I wasn't!"

"She was."

The last sentence came not from Valanice, Coignice or
Cedric, but from the white horse that Rosella was facing. She gaped, first at
the horse, then at her grandparents. Cedric snickered a little and looked
embarrassed.

"I'm sorry," he said sheepishly. "Didn't we tell you he
could talk?"

Even Valanice couldn't help smiling at this, though there
were tears in her eyes now. When the small group left the gardens sometime
later, she hardly noticed the black, feathery form flitting about in the
branches of the oak.

---

After a year or two living in Daventry, Valanice felt that
the crow she had seen in Kolyma was just a straggler that had been blown there
by a storm. Kolyma and Daventry weren't that far apart, and Daventry certainly
had a lot of crows. Valanice eventually convinced herself that the way a single
crow would sometimes appear on a windowsill or in a nearby tree was merely the
way some crows behaved.

But as the years went by, Valanice began watching the crows
that flocked in the fields and the crows that "visited" her more closely, and
slowly began to realize that the crows she was seeing were all the same one.
This crow was always alone, and it never seemed to associate with others of its
kind. It was also remarkably tame, and aside from the ragged flap of its wings,
it was completely silent – it never cawed or even moaned in the pitiful way
that crows occasionally did. As the years went by, the crow even seemed to age;
its feathers became shabbier, and the plumage around its beak began to turn
gray. It looked quite feeble and ancient the last time Valanice had glimpsed
it.

Though she had chased the creature away the first few times
it had appeared, thinking it to be a harbinger of ill fate, she had stopped
doing so when an odd truth suddenly dawned on her one day: the crow had never
visited immediately before a tragedy occurred…it visited only after
a tragedy occurred. It came after Alexander had been stolen away, it came after
Rosella had come down with that terrible fever when she was very young, it came
when Rosella left the castle to be sacrificed to the dragon…

Yet the crow also came on happy occasions as well. It was
there on the day Rosella and Alexander had been born, it was there when Castle
Daventry had been returned to its original location after its brief
imprisonment in Mordack's fortress, and it was there the day Valanice, her
husband and daughter had returned from the Land of the Green Isles.

The crow didn't seem to be a prelude to misfortune at all.
The way it showed up in the midst of hard times as well as joyful times seemed
a bit conflicting, but…what if in times of sorrow, the crow visited Valanice to
sympathize and to express its own sadness, while in times of joy, it visited to
share in the happiness and silently observe the gaiety from a distance? It was
a preposterous idea, but it seemed strangely fitting. Valanice couldn't think
of any other reasons why the crow kept appearing in her life.

---

Valanice's mind left the crow, returning to the day before
her parents departed Daventry. As Cedric and Coignice's servants were loading
the carriages, the elderly rulers requested to speak with their daughter in
private. Valanice led them to the room she and Graham shared, bolting the door
behind them. Something about the way her parents had phrased their request made
Valanice almost fearful of what they were about to tell her.

"What is it?" she asked softly.

Coignice breathed deeply and began speaking in a voice
barely louder than a whisper:

"It's something we have been meaning to tell you about ever
since we arrived in your kingdom…it deals with someone from your past. It's not
a pleasant story, but we felt it was best that you knew it."

Valanice nodded. Coignice continued:

"When your father, myself, Philomel and the others
confronted Hagatha for the final time, it was obvious that she knew that her
end was nigh. When Philomel stepped forward to deal with her, however, she
fixed her gaze on him and shrieked, ‘You may have triumphed over me, but I have
triumphed over your child!'

"Philomel hesitated at this, which very nearly was his
downfall, but he was able to avoid the sphere of flames the witch cast at him
and calmly inform her that he had no child. He swiftly dispatched her before
she could speak again."

"What exactly did he do to her?" Valanice said.

"None of us dared ask," Cedric admitted. "The deeper magic
of wizards is one that few people inquire into, and those who do sometimes
learn much more about that sort of magic than they bargained for. Philomel only
assured us that Hagatha would no longer be a threat to Kolyma.

"Something about the witch's last words puzzled us, though.
We spoke to Philomel's wife about it later, after the celebrations had died
down."

"Vesta?" Valanice inquired.

"Yes, her," Cedric replied. "When we asked Vesta about
Philomel's having a child, she looked startled for a moment, but then she
confessed that many years before, she had borne him a child – a little
girl."

"Then did Hagatha steal her?" Valanice asked.

"Wait until I've finished my story, daughter," Cedric said
gently. "Vesta's having a daughter was a surprise to both of us – apparently
she had carried and given birth to the child in complete secrecy. She even left
the castle for an inn in the town when the time drew near.

"It was there that she decided that she couldn't raise the
child as her own. Because wizards are constantly engrossed in their craft,
marriage is incredibly rare among them, if not almost completely nonexistent.
Philomel seldom saw Vesta as a wife; she was more of a faithful assistant to
him than a spouse. He did love her, but not in the way that she loved him. He
would often call upon her to assist him in his work and advise him on certain
matters, and there was rarely a day that she didn't help him in some way. She
had grown acclimated to this way of life, but she knew that she simply couldn't
raise her baby in it."

Valanice shifted uneasily. Cedric continued:

"However, Vesta could also see the child's potential for
magic: no matter who brought her up, she would eventually become aware of her
power and of her unique parentage as well. She could see much hardship in the
child's future, but there was much greatness as well. As soon as the girl was
weaned, Vesta left her in a basket on the doorstep of a childless couple that
she knew would give the child the love and attention that she and Philomel
could never give her."

Valanice was silent. Coignice drew closer to her.

"She also mentioned leaving two flowers in the child's
basket that she hoped the couple would interpret as the name she had chosen for
the infant," she said quietly. "Which they apparently did. The flowers were…"

"Amaranths," Valanice said without emotion.

Coignice nodded gently.

"Though over the years she glimpsed her child many times in
the town and the surrounding lands, Vesta never saw Amaranth again after you
were taken from us," she said. "She realized that she must have been killed by
Hagatha…which would explain what that monster said to Philomel…"

Valanice said nothing. She gazed out a nearby window at the
cloudless sky, her mother's words no longer audible to her. Vesta never knew
what happened to Amaranth, but Valanice did. The memory of hearing those unshod
footfalls on the tower steps and seeing that haggard, black-haired, dark-eyed
girl come stomping up to Hagatha, demanding that the witch release Valanice,
were painfully strong in the young queen's mind.

She tried to shut out that vision of the old crone's hand
striking that angular, pale face and the echo of that fragile form tumbling
down those stairs – those awful, awful stairs! And to think that Amaranth's
actions had indirectly led to Valanice's freedom, inspiring Hagatha to give
suitors the slimmest of chances to free Valanice by keeping that ramshackle
bridge to the portal intact – the bridge Amaranth had created after Hagatha had
cut through the land with that chasm in an attempt to stop Amaranth from
following her.

"There is one last thing I want to tell you, Daughter," the
elder queen said. "It is something Philomel once told me, something which I
have slowly come to accept over the years."

"What?" Valanice asked, her heart still aching from the
painful memory.

"In this world, nothing happens without its reason. Every
event, no matter how terrible it may be, has its purpose, and eventually, that
purpose is revealed."

Valanice fought to keep from shouting. What was her mother
implying? That Amaranth died for a reason? That Alexander was kidnapped for a
reason?

"What are you suggesting?" she asked in a trembling voice.

"I am suggesting nothing, daughter," Coignice said, with
deep sadness clouding her eyes as she acknowledged her daughter's grief. "I am
only passing on a piece of wisdom that I have been taught in the hopes that it
might bring meaning to your life, just as it did mine. At first, I didn't think
much of Philomel's philosophy, but over time, I began to see a pattern that
matched what he had told me perfectly."

"What do you mean?"

"In Kolyma, whenever something unpleasant happened to you,
Cedric or myself, something so wonderful that it eclipsed the sadness of the
previous event would occur. When Hagatha took you from us, you were rescued by
a man who was the very man you had been longing for. When she imprisoned us, we
were eventually freed and given a chance to restore our kingdom to its former
glory, a task which we eventually accomplished.

"I soon realized that these horrible misfortunes weren't
merely the result of Fate turning her back on us: they all seemed to happen for
a reason. It was then that I truly understood Philomel's words, and I no longer
saw tragedy in the same way again."

Coignice gripped Valanice's hand tightly and looked into her
face with eyes as azure as the sea that hugged Kolyma's shorelines. In a quiet,
firm voice, she said:

"Even the most terrible of events have their purpose,
Daughter. Remember that."

And the next day, both Cedric and Coignice had left the
castle in the company of their servants. The great white, winged horse sailed
placidly through the air ahead of them as they made their way back to
Daventry's harbor, the ocean, and the land that was their home.

---

"Even the most terrible of events have their purpose." A
superstitious old sorcerer like Philomel would believe in something like
that. Men like him were cut off from the world around them, living in one of
their own construction, coming up with their own quaint little theories on life,
love and death…how could they philosophize so confidently on things which they
had never truly experienced?

For sometime afterwards, Valanice was shocked that her
mother would let that empty phrase influence the way she perceived the world.
There was no hidden reason behind great misfortunes. They happened all the
time, to rich and poor alike, no matter how deserving or undeserving they were,
and they weren't always followed by happy events immediately afterwards. What
about that time Graham became gravely ill, so ill that he was close to death?
It was a stroke of incredible luck that Rosella was able to save him, and the
memory of that terrible night certainly wasn't eclipsed by the happiness that
followed…

But as time had ground on, Valanice found herself thinking
back to this and other tragedies…Alexander's kidnapping, Rosella being chosen
as a sacrifice for the dragon, their being kidnapped by that wizard, becoming
separated from Rosella in that strange realm of Eldritch…

If it weren't for Graham's sudden sickness when he was
tossing his hat to his children, Valanice realized, Rosella would probably
never have saved the fairy Genesta or liberated Edgar. Consequently, there
would be no one to lure Rosella and Valanice into Eldritch and thwart Malicia's
plans.

Not only that, but if Graham had passed on his hat and
retired from an adventurous life, he probably wouldn't have been on that walk
in the forest the day the wizard Mordack magically whisked Castle Daventry away
– Graham would have been in the castle with the rest of the family, and there
would be no one to free them…and no one to free Cassima, the girl who was now
Alexander's bride.

As for Alexander's kidnapping, he did eventually return
home…he even bested a menacing wizard and destroyed the dragon that was
terrorizing Daventry along the way, not to mention rescuing Rosella. Even
though it had taken many years, somehow the heartbreak caused by his
disappearance was lessened by his triumphant return. Things had turned out for
the best in that case as well.

It was a similar story when the men from Alexander's ship
had returned to Daventry without the prince: Alexander was not only alive and
well, but he had found that girl he had been pining over for so long and
liberated her kingdom from the clutches of a power-mad vizier.

The more Valanice thought about it, the truer her mother's
words seemed. Even if it took weeks, months or years, a tragedy was bound to be
followed by a time of happiness. Whether this was some fundamental law of the
world or a manifestation of a higher power, Valanice didn't know, but somehow,
she felt that she was better off not knowing and just be glad that things were
this way.

But if her mother's words were true, What about the
last misfortune Valanice had endured on the day when the river of her life
began to change its course, the day when Hagatha had dragged her to that tower?

The day Amaranth had died.

But now, as Valanice forced herself to remember that day,
she realized that she had never seen Amaranth die. Though Hagatha had told
Philomel that "triumphed over her", she had never confessed killing her. Not
only that, but Hagatha wasn't the sort that destroyed her victims. The way she
had dealt with Valanice's parents was evidence of that.

Had the fall really killed her? Hagatha had never told
Valanice what happened to Amaranth, and Valanice had never dared ask the witch
what happened.

Was indirectly helping Valanice the only "greatness" that
Vesta had seen in Amaranth? Was Valanice's rescue the only happiness that
followed the tragedy of Amaranth's disappearance? If it was, then why did that
memory still hang so heavily upon Valanice's heart? Was there still a greater
joy that had yet to occur?

---

The queen slowly turned to face the window. The crow was
still there, staring at her with dark, shining eyes. Valanice stared back for a
moment, then took a step towards the bird. It remained motionless, not even
nervously flicking its wings as she did.

Valanice extended a hand. The crow hesitated, then flew to
it, its scaly feet gently gripping her delicate, tapered fingers. Valanice
examined the creature. It was much more shaggy and disheveled up close than it
appeared from a distance. Its feet quivered slightly as they held onto her hand
and its large black eyes stared deeply into her own, and at such a close
distance, the pale fringe around its eyes and beak was quite obvious.
Everything about the bird projected an aura of agedness and weakness. At the
same time, though, there was what seemed like some species of emotion. Not wild
fear or boiling rage, the only emotions that wild beasts seemed capable of
expressing. This was a gentle, quiet, almost human emotion….But what was it?
Longing? Desperation? Hope?

Love?

Valanice raised her other hand. The crow bowed its head and
flexed its wings agitatedly but did not fly off. Valanice reached towards it
with her fingers and cautiously began stroking the animal's back. Though the
crow seemed pleased by this action, it would not stop staring into Valanice's
eyes.

As Valanice ran her nails through the crow's limp black
feathers, she recalled how crows were often the familiars of witches, along
with black cats and toads. She also remembered her parents' retelling of how
Philomel had changed himself into a bird to conceal himself from Hagatha, and
how that scheme had almost been his downfall. Valanice then remembered how her
mother and father had been changed into animals by Hagatha, and imprisoned in
the same realm their daughter was in, so close to her, yet unable to see her,
or even tell her who they were.

---

Valanice stopped stroking the crow, took one last look into
the sad little creature's eyes, slowly bent over it and kissed it gently on the
top of its head.

The crow suddenly let out a loud, plaintive cry and leapt
from Valanice's hand. Valanice took several nervous steps back as a white,
flickering glow enveloped the bird as it fluttered haphazardly in midair.
Valanice put up an arm to shield her eyes against the blinding light, which
thankfully only persisted for a few seconds.

When Valanice lowered her arm, the crow was gone. In its
place was a thin, pale-skinned woman. Her thick, tangled black tresses were now
intermingling with silvery strands of white. Her dirty, angular face had become
speckled with pockmarks, and age spots dotted her arms and hands. Her eyes,
however, hadn't changed at all. They were still as dark and brilliant as two
black pearls.

The haggard woman stared blankly ahead for a moment,
standing in a slightly bent, tense position like a nervous animal. Her eyes
then darted about the room, taking in its various details. Then her gaze fell
upon Valanice, who had been just as still, silent, and nervous as she.

The woman's lips slowly parted. She took several shaky
breaths through her mouth, then spoke in a weak, trembling voice:

"Valanice?"

Though it had changed greatly, Valanice recognized the voice
just as she had recognized its owner. With tears welling in her eyes, she
slowly approached the thin figure.

"Hello, Amaranth."

The wild, frightened look in the woman's eyes seemed to
lessen at the mention of her name, and her fragile body suddenly appeared lithe
and strong. She took a tentative step towards Valanice, who gently extended a
hand. Amaranth reached out with her own hands, stared spellbound at them for a
moment, as if in amazement at seeing them again, then grasped Valanice's hand
with a grip that was gentle and trembling at first, but quickly became firm and
steady.

Though the spell that Hagatha bound Amaranth with had
changed her shape, it couldn't change her heart. Valanice had been her friend,
and even as an animal, Amaranth loved her and followed her wherever she went.
She was somehow able to understand when something unfortunate or joyous had
just happened to Valanice, and she would draw closer to her during those times,
just as she had done in Valanice's life in Kolyma.

Amaranth's face suddenly crumpled into a saddened grimace.

"I…failed, didn't I?" she croaked, her sharp shoulders
sagging.

Valanice gently shook her head.

"It doesn't matter now," she said. "After all, I wouldn't
call what you accomplished a failure."

"What do you mean?"

Valanice sighed, recalling all that had happened over the
past two decades, all the events, good and bad, mundane and miraculous, that
had taken place since Amaranth's attempt to rescue her.

"I'll explain later," Valanice replied.

Suddenly, she noticed Amaranth's clothing – or what there
was left of it. Though the dress she wore was greatly stained, tattered, torn,
discolored and worn through in many places, it still bore a resemblance to the
one she had worn the last time Valanice had seen her all those years ago. In
fact, Valanice was sure it was the same dress. Embarrassed, the queen averted
her eyes. Then, after an awkward pause, she composed herself, looked again into
Amaranth's dark eyes and smiled warmly.

"Come with me, Amaranth," she said. "After I find you some
new clothes, I'd like you to come see the life that you helped introduce me
to."

And in a voice that was audible only within her mind, she
added:

It seems as if your father was right after all.

---

Author's Notes:

After "The Forgotten Captives" was released, somebody who read the story said
that she wondered whether Coignice and Cedric would ever see Valanice again. At
the same time, I started thinking about Amaranth, one of my best early KQ fan
characters (from "Valanice"), and how I could possibly give such an interesting character "a
second chance". So I wrote this story and – that's right – killed two birds
with one stone! Of course, this all speculation, and perhaps not everything
should have a happy ending, but this is a story based on the King's Quest
series.